Aston Martin brings four-door Rapide

Four doors, four seats, lithe and sleek as an Olympic swimmer. And oh, yeah, $199,950. That's the price Aston Martin released yesterday after we attended a special media and Aston Martin owner introduction December 3 at the Chelsea Art Museum in Manhattan when we got our first look at the Rapide in the aluminum and up close.

Some say the Aston Martin Rapide is a car that shouldn't have been built. There has never before been a four-door Aston Martin. Yet there it is. And we say the naysayers are wrong. The Aston Martin is sweet as a Georgia peach but without the fuzz.

We say that without driving it or even hearing it run. No doubt the Chelsea Art Museum folks would probably object to our spinning donuts in the exhibit hall. And anyway, there are all those support columns in the way.
However, the Aston Martin Rapide is based on the same platform as the DB9. Aston Martin calls it Vertical / Horizontal architecture, using bonded rather than welded aluminum per aerospace industry practices. The engine is the familiar (to the AM devotee at least) 6.0-liter V-12, rated at 470 horsepower at 6000 rpm and 443 lb-ft of torque at 5000, and mounted front mid-ship, per other Aston Martins. Transmission is a six-speed Touchtronic 2 automatic, with PRND buttons on the dash and paddle shifting. With an increase in curb weight of only 420 lbs over the DB9, the resultant 0-60 time, as Aston Martin would say, is a mere 5.1 seconds.

The suspension of the Aston Martin Rapide is the familiar (again) double wishbone front and rear with adaptive shock absorbers for a smooth ride with sports car handling. Which indeed is what Aston Martin calls the Rapide, a four-door sports car.

We have to take them at their word about the sports car part, though we have little cause to doubt it. What aroused our curiosity, at least for the evening, was how well the Aston Martin Rapide succeeded aesthetically and how well it functioned as a four-door, four-passenger vehicle.

Those with very long memories will remember the Jaguar E-type 2+2 as a good car gone bad via a good idea that should not have been: the E-type 2+2 had a swollen hunchback that ruined the E-type's essential proportions. Although the Aston Martin Rapide retains the front doors--the only doors--of the Aston Martin DB9, and also its hood, the remainder of the Rapide is entirely new. We find it impressive that any body part had been able to be carried over. The Rapide's contours look entirely fresh to our Philistine eyes.